The Lost Year
by Chasing Liquor
Summary: McKay's had something precious taken from him, and it's making him question everything. McKeller.


**Disclaimer**: MGM's got the goods.

**Spoilers: **Nothing in particular.

**Description:** McKay's had something precious taken from him, and it's making him question everything. McKeller.

**Warnings: **I think you're safe from anything tawdry for the most part.

**A/N**: I almost felt guilty for not writing a McKeller piece for a couple weeks, so here's this. It's sort of dark, I guess, but I like to think "nice" too. It shouldn't come as any shock that this piece, like half my catalogue, was inspired by a Bruce song -- one particular performance of it, in fact. I placed a link to it in my profile, if you're interested to hear it.

Leave me some feedback and let me know what you think, if you'd be so kind. Thanks, and I hope you enjoy.

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**The Lost Year**

* * *

_I'm searchin' for one clear moment of love and truth_

_I still got a little faith, oh but what I need is some proof tonight_

_and I'm lookin' for it in your eyes_

Not much changed between seven and eight.

He didn't mature much, in mind or body. He wore the same pair of shoes – size 6 – and most of his shirts fit him the same. He played the same games and watched the same TV shows (Dr. Who, and Star Trek and Kolchak reruns), and his parents were just as chagrined to care for him from month to month to month.

From twenty to twenty-one, things changed a little.

He was finished his undergraduate degree and working on his first doctorate by the time his twenty-first birthday rolled around. Still, it didn't _feel_ much different. He was still a kid trying to come in to his own, and feeling like it wasn't happening. Down south in the States, Reagan was succeeded by Bush, and the world couldn't find a bit of variance.

When twenty-nine gave way to thirty, things felt a lot different.

He wasn't a kid anymore. He wasn't preparing for the rest of his life – rather, he was in the midst of it. It was a terrifying feeling. Logically, of course, he knew that as a practical matter, nothing had really changed. He was still working the same job and consorting with the same people – he hesitated to call them friends, because he knew they talked about him behind his back (with good reason) – and he was living in the same apartment with the same cat, who God help the creature, loved him the same.

And then thirty-nine gave way to forty.

They say great lengths of your life can pass in the time it takes to clap your hands, but it's never meant to be a literal thing. All it means is that, if you don't pay attention to grace, or stop to appreciate it amidst the maelstroms of existence, you're losing something you won't get back. But for once – for once in his Godforsaken, putrid life – he'd not taken time or grace for granted. He'd been paying attention. He'd been savoring life's reprieves. The time he lost, it wasn't fumbled away; it was taken from him, by a thief who looked like the Devil, but felt the part of Robin Hood.

McKay glanced in the mirror, examining the feeding scar with squinted eyes.

He'd seen the mark on other people, but until he bore the thing himself, he'd always regarded it the way one would clever makeup on Halloween. There was a certain detachment or naivety about it. But to see the thing on your own chest, to be forever branded with a reminder of the thing a being raped you for…

He quickly pulled his shirt back down, a ragged breath spilling out.

His bones creaked, or at least it felt like it, and he swore the lines around his eyes were bigger or deeper, and he was quite positive he could see a spot of grey at one temple. Was there less hair too? He couldn't tell, but it looked like it. He spent a few minutes pushing it around to make it look like it had before.

When he was done, and it still looked like there was less of it, he closed his eyes and thought about all the bullets the thief had taken for its trouble. The vacant stare when it finally stilled was a consolation of sorts, but somehow his one year for the thief's hundred didn't feel fair. He could have taken a century from every living being in this galaxy and all others, and it wouldn't have been enough. When some things are gone, they're gone gone gone.

"McKay, this is Sheppard; come in."

He took his earpiece off and tossed it in the sink, then started the water running.

For a while longer, he stared in the mirror, cataloguing his demarcations. When he was reasonably certain he'd done a thorough accounting, he went into the other room and laid down on his bed with a computer tablet, immersing himself in some problem or another for several hours.

The chime at his door rang a few times, but he ignored it and kept working.

One person proved a bit more intrepid than to accept that, though.

He sighed when the door opened and Keller entered, and when it closed behind her, his eyes snapped back to the tablet. He could feel her own eyes on him, but she didn't say anything for a while, and he didn't get the sense that her gaze was scrutinizing him the way his own had.

It was a mystery to him why he felt so determined to be contrary, or to make things awkward between them, but it seemed somehow as if that were the only way to be – like it was a predestined thing. When he risked a glance at her, he saw her sitting on the edge of his desk, and she didn't appear uncomfortable at all. That almost made him angry.

"Did you come to watch me wither away in real time?" he asked bitterly.

He didn't look back at her, but if he had, he'd have seen her smile slightly.

"I came to check on my boyfriend," she said, "but he's being kind of grumpy right now."

McKay grunted inaudibly.

"Well, you know how old people are."

This time, it was Keller who sighed.

He felt the bed sink down beneath her weight.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Fine, aside from the osteoporosis."

She smiled again, though this time sadly. He still wouldn't look at her. There were circles under his eyes, and his face looked tired and drawn, but it wasn't the first time she'd seen him that way. And he hardly looked any different – except for a hint of gray at one temple. The lines on his face weren't any deeper, and anyone his age – thirty-nine _or _forty – would be happy to have the ones around the forehead look as slight as his did.

But she closed her eyes for a moment, and she tried to picture what _he_ saw. She pretended that the lines were deeper, and that he did have less hair, and that what he had of it was as much gray as brown. She pretended he walked with a limp, and that his voice was gruffer, and that his day's worth of stubble gave him the look of one of those Old West bank-robbers holding on for one last score. She thought about all those things, and she didn't cringe once.

He flinched when she took the tablet out of his hands and tossed it on the floor.

"Oh, _that's_ polite," he grumbled.

She let out a tiny laugh with a puff of air, helpless to feel anything but love when he groused with that cute crease of frustration. When his eyes found hers, though, she sobered.

"Hey," she said quietly after a moment.

He fought hard not to look away.

"Hey."

She'd seen him this way before – shifty and nervous and melancholy – but she'd never seen him so utterly bankrupt of meaning and self-respect. Still, she could tell by the way he was looking at her that his hope to get those things back wasn't dead – at least not completely.

"I missed you," she said softly.

That drew a wry smile from him, at least.

"I saw you like five hours ago."

"I know," she said, sliding toward him, "and it felt like forever."

He surprised her by swinging his legs over the side of the bed, turning away from her, hunching forward, elbows against his knees. Then he shook his head, and he flinched again when he felt her chin atop his shoulder.

"What's the matter?"

She thought she knew the answer, but it was important that she asked it aloud. And his tired sigh – or maybe it was a groan – said even more than the words which followed it.

"Jen, you…" Then another harsh sigh, or groan. "You don't have to do this."

"Do what?"

His hands began to fidget nervously.

"I mean… if – I think this makes things different. You don't have to pretend it doesn't if it does."

She frowned, and he could feel her shake her head against him.

"Why would this make anything different?"

"I was already a little old before," he said sadly, "and now I'm even older."

Her arms snaked around his mid-section, and against his more sophisticated instincts, he relaxed against her a little. She dropped a kiss on the base of his neck.

"You weren't old then and you're not old now. Stop being silly."

He shook his head fervently, though the act was difficult with her molded against him the way she was.

"You don't have to pretend. It – I mean – before was bad enough. I didn't have that much hair and I was in my late thirties and you're young and gorgeous and – well, obviously crazy if you turned down Konan the Destroyer for – "

He grunted in surprise when, with a strength he hadn't realized she possessed, Keller pulled him back toward the center of the bed, and as his legs found the mattress once more out of instinct, he was flat on his back and the slender doctor was on top of him, her mouth renewing its months-long claim on his.

McKay couldn't help but respond, letting out a contented sigh as she moved against him. She did most of the work, sliding from one lip to the other with tenderness and earnestness, then demanding those lips part to permit her tongue between them.

Beneath her, she could feel his body relaxing, every muscle in his upper half seeming to uncoil under her ministrations. She sought to help the cause further, pressing her fingers firmly into the flesh of his arms and neck and through his shirt just under his collarbone.

He was content to let her mark her territory throughout. But when he felt her grip the hem of his shirt and begin to pull it up, he stiffened beneath her, and his hands fumbled to cover hers and halt the effort.

"Wait," he murmured desperately against her mouth, the word imbued with so much sorrow.

She gently fought off his manic hands, pressing her mouth against his ear.

"Shh," she cooed. "It's okay."

He stilled his efforts momentarily, as her hands trailed up his stomach toward his chest, her mouth following them with a trail of baby kisses. When he felt her thumb faintly trace the feeding scar, though, she felt him get restless again, and could hear him murmur under his breath, "Stop. Stop."

She didn't, though. She finished tracing it with her pad, then traced it a second time with the tip of her tongue. He squeezed his eyes shut, hands trembling at his sides like the vibrations of a car sitting at a traffic light.

Keller's hands gently pulled the fabric back down, obscuring once more the wrong which had been done him.

And even with his eyes closed, he could see her, as if in possession of a clairvoyant's second sight, and though he'd no desire to let her in to the dark places where his mind now walked, her commitment – true and kind and nearly divine – seemed to take the choice from his calloused hands, and lay it in her soft ones.

At some unheard urging, the lids of his eyes peeled back, and dull optics met bright ones.

His were full of fear and doubt and a damaged understanding of the things he was, but within them too were swirling the scraps of hope and faith and the love which she'd as recently as yesterday professed for him.

Hers weren't full of anything. They were vacant, empty but for an invitation – let me share the awfulness of this thing the world did to you.

He blinked, hands holding her hips firmly. And he had the strength to hope a little.

"You still love me?" he asked quietly.

She nodded and smiled, and though it was tempered with the knowledge that such a thing might not be enough, she felt her faith in God's design muddle through the night.

They kissed again and did some other things, and he had that flash of epiphany at the moment he was supposed to.

_And if love is hopeless, hopeless at best_

_Then darlin' put on your party dress, 'cause it's ours tonight  
_

_and we're goin' with the tumblin' dice_

* * *

**FIN**


End file.
